Fields of glory

'His life, his skill, his service all merited the highest honour ... I pay humble tribute to his memory.' Don Bradman's reaction to the death in action of his great cricketing adversary Hedley Verity reminds us of an era when sportsmen excelled bravely in battle as well as on the pitch. As Remembrance Sunday approaches, we recall feats of true heroism and fortitude: from the pioneering black English footballer who died on the Western Front to the RAF fighter pilot who opened the batting for England to the rugby Lion who became commander of the SAS. Special report by Gavin Mortimer

Sunday 6 November 2005Observer Sport Monthly

Bill Edrich1916-1985 Middlesex and England cricketer and Royal Air Force

Right up to his death in 1986, Bill Edrich never forgot the incongruity of those summer days in 1941 when he was a bomber pilot stationed in Norfolk and the squadron unwound between missions with games of cricket at Massingham Hall. 'Every now and then would come the old accustomed cry: "Owzatt?" ' Edrich recalled. 'And then one's mind would flicker off the briefing, to joking with a pal ... and one saw again his machine cartwheeling down, flaming from nose to tail.'

Like all bomber pilots, Edrich adopted an attitude of 'devil-may-care'. It was the gods who decided who lived and who died. One Sunday morning in 1941 Edrich's squadron bombed a fighter base on a small island off the German coast. The seven Blenheim bombers flew the 800 miles to their target at a height of 50ft to avoid the enemy radar, but when they arrived over the island the sea 'was crowded with ships who were firing everything they had at us'. Three Blenheims were shot down; the remaining four dropped their bombs and turned tail. A few minutes later the survivors were attacked by four Messerschmitts. Time and again the German fighters swooped down, with machine guns blazing. After 20 minutes the four Blenheims and three of the Messerschmitts had run out of ammunition. 'Twenty minutes of air battle is a hell of a long time,' Edrich reflected, 'like two or three lifetimes rolled into one.'

But one German had a few more cartridges left. He singled out the aircraft piloted by Edrich and moved in for the kill. 'He closed to point blank-range - about 30 yards - and then nothing happened.' As the German roared past cursing the jam in his guns, Edrich caught the pilot's eye and saw a 'look of exasperation... [but] with a shrug of his shoulder he turned away'.

For Edrich, as his England team-mate Trevor Bailey said years later, such moments instilled in him a belief that 'life was for living, not existing. Now was the vital time and he was never unduly concerned about the morrow.'

Outwardly, it seemed that the war (in which he won the Distinguished Flying Cross) hadn't affected Edrich's jaunty character, but the stress of operational flying had left its mark. Denis Compton, a team-mate for county as well as country, described how Edrich often unwound after a day's play with a drink or two. 'He would obviously need a few beers to restore himself between operations and this becomes a customary habit if you do it for a long time in such circumstances.'

Edrich's insouciance served him well on the cricket field. Before the war he had found international cricket a struggle, scoring 307 runs in his first eight Tests. But after the war he thrived: in the 1946...#8209;47 tour to Australia, he scored 462 runs at an average of 46.20. The next English summer Edrich had the golden touch, for his country and Middlesex, as did his great pal Compton. Six times in the 1947 season the pair compiled partnerships of 200 plus, twice in Tests against South Africa. Dudley Nourse, the tourists' skipper, groaned in exasperation: 'As individuals we liked and admired Edrich and Compton... as a pair together at the wicket they strained our friendship to the limit.'

The 1912 Stockholm Olympics were a disaster for a Great Britain team that won only one gold medal. 'We have been made a laughing stock,' thundered the Athletic News. 'In a world's race for supremacy we are veritable amateurs.' ] Only 21-year-old Oxford undergraduate Arnold Jackson had prevented Britain from total humiliation, his victory in the 1,500 metres over Abe Kiviat, the American world record-holder, restoring some pride in the Empire. The Athletic News congratulated Jackson on setting a world record (3min 56.8sec), then asked: 'What will he do in the future?'

Jackson continued to run for Oxford, completing a hat-trick of Varsity mile triumphs in 1914, but when he should have been defending his Olympic title, in Berlin in 1916, he was fighting on the Somme. Jackson's regiment, the Rifle Brigade, went over the top on 10 July and lost 400 men to the German machine guns. He next saw action at Arras in April 1917 when, as a major, he was awarded a Distinguished Service Order and then a bar (an insignia added to the medal to indicate a second similar award) within a few weeks. The citation for his second DSO read: 'Although wounded on two separate occasions [he] was able to carry out most valuable work. By his skill and courage he offered a splendid example to all ranks with him.'

Jackson fought all through the Third Battle of Ypres, also known as Passchendaele, and in March 1918 won a third bar to his DSO for his part in repelling a German assault. 'It was entirely due to his powers of command,' said the citation, 'and the splendid spirit with which he inspired his men that the attack on the greater part of his front was repulsed.' A fourth bar was added in August, again for his 'conspicuous gallantry and brilliant leadership'. In October, he became, at 27, the youngest (acting) brigadier in the British Army.

But a week before the end of the war his luck ran out. He was severely wounded in the leg during fighting on the France-Belgium border, but he survived, even if he walked with a limp for the rest of his life. He emigrated to the United States and there became a successful businessman, returning to the UK in 1963 after his wife's death. He once more settled in Oxford and, in 1972, he attended a dinner at his former college, Brasenose. The college magazine noted that, at 81, 'he still retained traces of his former magnificent physique ... He seemed to dominate the high table'. He died a month later.

Blair Mayne1915-1955 Ireland and British Lions rugby player and the SAS

One of Blair Mayne's team-mates on the 1938 Lions tour to South Africa, vice-captain Vivian Jenkins, described the Ulsterman as 'a very quiet chap... At first glance you would think he wouldn't hurt a fly, but we soon discovered that when steamed up he would do anything.'

Mayne was more cerebral than his powerful 6ft 4in frame suggested. He had won his first Ireland cap in 1937 while reading law at university in Belfast and he enjoyed poetry, singing and horticulture. But there was a dark side to him - and he relished violence and confrontation.

He was impressively consistent on that Lions tour, a view shared by the South African newspapers. 'Outstanding' in the first Test, he was 'magnificent' in the third, the Lions' only victory. Fortunately the press never reported what was happening off the pitch. In Durban, while the rest of the squad went to a black-tie reception, Mayne preferred to go down to the docks to take on the biggest dockers he could find. Jenkins remembered Mayne turning up to the party later, 'bloody and battered ... but having had a great time'.

From Durban the squad moved north to Pietermaritzburg. Their hotel was shabby and the rooms dirty, recalled Jenkins, so Mayne 'decided to stage a one-man protest ... He proceeded to break everything in the room, the bed, the wardrobe, the drawers, he broke the whole bloody lot and then piled it in the middle.' Asked by the tour manager to explain this, Mayne said that the squad had been treated with disrespect by the hotel, so he was, in return, treating the hotel with disrespect.

Mayne played for Ireland in the 1939 Five Nations while working as a solicitor . Legal work bored him and he welcomed the opportunity to enlist in the Ulster Rifles when war was declared. Within a year he had joined the commandos and, by the summer of 1941, he was one of 60 volunteers in a small desert unit, the Special Air Service. Its purpose was guerrilla warfare behind enemy lines: attacking airfields, ambushing convoys, destroying ammunition dumps. On one of the first SAS raids, Mayne and three others crept on to a German airfield in Libya and placed bombs on every aircraft they encountered in the dark. Finding there was one plane too many for their supply of bombs, Mayne climbed on to the wing of a Messerschmitt, leaned inside and, as though he was mauling the ball from a set of Springbok forwards, 'I ripped out the dashboard for a souvenir'.

By the time the Germans abandoned North Africa in 1943, Mayne had a DSO and command of the SAS. In the invasion of Italy, he was first out of the assault craft according to one of his men, Alf Dignum. 'No one knew if the beach was mined or not. Mayne was first up the beach, walking all the way, and by the time we'd followed him up, there was still only one set of footprints.'

Mayne was awarded a bar to his DSO in Italy, another in occupied France in 1944 for 'his fine leadership and example and his utter disregard of danger', and a third in the final weeks of the war when he rescued several of his men who were pinned down by German fire. 'I never saw him scared,' said Johnny Cooper, who fought with Mayne for four years. 'He didn't have a problem about his own safety and it seemed that he accepted death as part of the job. If it happened, well, it happened.'

When Mayne left the army in 1945 he was a lieutenant-colonel and one of the most decorated British soldiers of all. But the peace for which he had fought so ferociously threw his life into turmoil. War was his true vocation, not law, and he began drinking heavily. He was killed driving his sports car in December 1955, not far from the home he shared with his mother in Newtownards, Co Down. 'What a bloody daft way to die, after all that he had been through,' said Vivian Jenkins. 'But he found it so hard to adjust to civilian life and you can understand it, can't you?'

Edgar Mobbs was never orthodox. On the wing for England he displayed a running style that was all his own. 'Every limb seemed to be employed, as it seemed, independently when he ran,' commented the Rugby Football periodical. 'This laborious action of his rather deceived one as to the pace he was actually going.'

Mobbs scored four tries in seven internationals before he was discarded, without explanation; he suspected it was because of his outspoken views. After one game, he told a local paper: 'The whole idea of our side was wrong. We ought to have gone into it with the intention of attacking instead of which we defended.' On another occasion, Mobbs demanded an apology from the RFU after they had erroneously accused his club, Northampton, of professionalism.

Mobbs retired from rugby in 1913, having scored 177 tries for Northampton. When war broke out, a year later, he was denied a commission. The explanation was that, at 32, he was too old. Furious, Mobbs used his connections to raise a Sportsman's Battalion. The idea was an instant success. They went into action for the first time in 1915, at the Battle of Loos. Casualties were heavy. Mobbs wrote to his sister, saying: 'I am sick of having to write to all the mothers, etc, about their children, but one has to do it.' He was wounded in the shoulder during the Somme offensive of 1916, but was soon back with his battalion and was awarded a DSO early in 1917.

On 25 July of that year he wrote to his sister just before the start of the Third Battle of Ypres. 'Look out in the papers in a few days' time,' he said, 'and think of me and pray for me.' Six days later a runner brought word to Mobbs at HQ that his Battalion had been trapped by machine-gun fire as they tried to capture some high ground. Defying military convention, Lt-Col Mobbs left HQ in an attempt to inject fresh impetus into the assault. He was killed leading his men; his body was lost in the mud of no-man's-land.

Norman Yardley saw Captain Hedley Verity, a slow left-arm bowler for Yorkshire and England, an hour before their regiment, the Green Howards, launched an attack on German positions at Catania, Sicily. It was 19 July 1943. Yardley, an all-rounder who had made his England debut in 1938, recalled that, before setting off into the darkness at the head of his company, Verity 'was very fi t and in good spirits' . Their objective was a strongly fortified ridge about 1,000 yards away. It was a hellish approach through burning corn twofeet high. They were under continuous machine-gun and mortar f re. Verity was hit in the chest . 'Keep going,' he ordered, 'keep going,' but the enemy fire was too strong and the British withdrew . Verity was last glimpsed in the arms of his batman, Tom Rennoldson, who prided himself on never having seen a game of first-class cricket.

A month later Yardley wrote to a friend saying 'a search has been made but there is no trace of him - nor of any grave. Another thing that makes us think he was wounded and is a prisoner is that his batman stayed with him, has never been seen , and is presumed to be a prisoner.'

By the time Yardley posted his letter, Verity had been dead a fortnight. When Rennoldson returned from captivity he spoke of how he and a German offi cer had carried Verity from the battlefield to a field hospital. Verity lived for a few more days but died during an operation on 31 July. He was 38. Don Bradman, who was dismissed eight times by Verity (more than by any other Test bowler), was affected deeply by his old adversary's death: 'His life, his skill, his service all merited the highest honour and with great sorrow I unhesitatingly pay humble tribute to his memory.'

Verity took 1,956 first-class wickets at 14.87 runs each, 144 of them in his 40 Test matches at an average of 24.37. Against Australia at Lords, in 1934, he took 15 for 104, including Bradman for 36 and 13; England have not beaten Australia there since. None of his teammates or opponents was surprised by the manner of his death. As Wisden said: 'He was solid, conscientious, disciplined; and something far more. In all that he did, till his most gallant end, he showed the vital fire, and warmed others in its flame.'

Donald Bell1890-1916 Bradford footballer and Green Howards

Donald Bell played sport with effortless grace. At school in Yorkshire he excelled at rugby, cricket, athletics and, above all, football. One contemporary recalled that his secret was a 'unique gift of acceleration; he could start from zero on the centre line, be in top gear in two strides, and cover 30, 40 or 50 yards at the speed of a sprinter on a track'. Leaving school in 1909, he spent two years training to be a teacher, before going to work in Harrogate.

He joined Newcastle as an amateur in 1911, playing at right-back. He attracted the attention of Bradford Park Avenue, who offered him a pro contract in 1913. An injury in early 1914 curtailed his season, but Park Avenue went up to Division One and the outlook was bright. 'Bell is one of the best type of the professional footballer,' said one paper, 'broad-minded in outlook and scrupulously fair in his play.' He was back to full fitness and in pre-season training when the war began.

He joined up as a private, but by early 1915 he had been commissioned as a second lieutenant into the Green Howards on the strength of his leadership qualities. By June 1916, when he came home on leave, the regiment had seen little fighting. But like all the front-line troops, Bell had heard rumours of an imminent 'big push'. He married Rhoda Bonson on 5 June, but two days later returned to the trenches to discover that the rumours were true.

The Battle of the Somme began on 1 July; that day nearly 20,000 British troops died. Bell and the Green Howards had been held in reserve, but on 5 July they were ordered to clear the Germans from a 1,500-yard stretch of high ground called Horseshoe Trench. Despite taking heavy casualties, the Green Howards captured the trench and began to dig in. Suddenly a machine gun opened up on their extreme left, killing several of them. Grabbing a couple of hand grenades, Bell ran along the captured trench until just before it petered out. Crouching down, he could see the Germans' machine-gun emplacement. Between him and it there were 30 yards of no-man's-land with no cover. He waited until the gunner began to rake the length of the trench then accelerated forward with a speed that surprised the German. Before he could swing round his gun, Bell was close enough to hurl a grenade. It was deadly accurate, although in a letter to his mother 48 hours later he called it 'the biggest fluke alive... I only chucked one bomb but it did the trick... My athletics came in handy this trip.'

Three days later, Bell was killed charging another machine gun. A fellow officer described his last moments: 'He advanced with great courage right up to where the enemy was posted. He took careful aim and bowled out several of the Germans. Unfortunately he was hit. For a while he fought on, but was hit again.'

Bell died unaware he had been awarded the Victoria Cross for his actions on 5 July, the only English professional footballer ever to receive Britain's premier gallantry medal. Bell's personal effects were returned to his parents by his batman, John Byers, along with a short note. 'The Company worshipped him in their simple, wholehearted way and so they ought, he saved the lot of us from being completely wiped out.'

Bobby Cruickshank1894-1975 Golfer and Seaforth Highlanders

The Americans later tried to claim him as one of their own, but wee Bobby Cruickshank was all Scots. The golfer was born in Grantown-on-Spey, in November 1894, and was at Edinburgh University when war was declared. He enlisted in the Seaforth Highlanders along with his younger brother, John. The pair went over the top for the first time together during the Battle of the Somme, an experience he said was so frightening that 'I was sure wishing there was a way to get out and go home'. He survived the Somme and also Passchendaele which, with its mud, rain and shells, was even more pitiless. On 23 September 1917 the German artillery put down a fearsome barrage on the stretch of trench the Highlanders were holding. 'Shells were bursting everywhere and you could really smell the damned cordite,' Cruickshank recalled more than 50 years later. 'You could feel it in your mouth. When the barrage lifted there were 78 of our company killed out of 110 ... I never found my brother and yet he had been as close to me as from here to that door.' Cruickshank's leg was peppered with shrapnel from the shell that had obliterated his brother, but he had made a complete recovery by the time the armistice was signed.

In 1921 Cruickshank left for America where, according to the New York Times golf correspondent, Arthur Daley, he soon became the 'darling of the gallery-ites' on account of his 'ebullient' personality. He won 20 events on the US tour, but never a major - he lost the 1923 US Open title to Bobby Jones after a memorable play-off.

The film Chariots of Fire immortalised Eric Liddell, portraying him as the strong-willed Christian Scotsman who refused to run for Britain in the 100 metres in the 1924 Paris Olympics because the final fell on the Sabbath. Instead, he won bronze in the 200m and entered the 400m, an event in which he rarely took part. Head thrown back in spiritual ecstasy, he won the gold in a then Olympic record time of 47.6 seconds. The film's depiction of Liddell was largely accurate, though it barely mentioned his rugby exploits (four tries in seven Tests for Scotland) and neglected the manner of his death in 1945.

Sporting prowess was, for Liddell, but a footnote in a life devoted to God. In 1925 he went to China as a missionary, continuing his work throughout the many years of fighting between the Chinese and the invading Japanese from 1931 onwards. Having sent his wife and three daughters to Canada, Liddell was interned by the Japanese in 1943 when he crossed their lines to preach. One of his fellow internees in Shantung compound was a young American teacher called Langdon Gilkey, who wrote that Liddell was 'overflowing with good humour and love for life, and with enthusiasm and charm. It is rare indeed that a person has the good fortune to meet a saint, but he came as close to it as anyone I have ever known.'

Liddell died in the camp of a brain tumour in February 1945. He was 43. For many years his grave was lost, but was eventually rediscovered in 1991. A new headstone was erected with an inscription chosen by Liddell's sister, Jenny. 'Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.'

When Walter Tull was commissioned into the British army in 1917 he must have felt a keen sense of pride. Not many working-class lads rose through the ranks , particularly orphans who had spent their early years in a workhouse. Still more remarkable, Tull was black and military law stated that commissions were not open to 'negroes or persons of colour'. But in two years' fighting, Tull had so impressed his senior officers that the rule book was ripped up.

It wasn't the first time Tull had been a pioneer. In 1908, aged 20, he joined Spurs to become the first black outfield professional in Britain. His speed at inside-left troubled defences in his early games. But at Bristol City in October 1909, Tull was racially abused from the terraces. The Bristol Football Star wrote of a 'cowardly attack' by 'Bristol hooligans '. 'Tull is so clean in mind and method as to be a model for all white men who play football, amateur or professional.' But Tull's confidence was aff ected and his form declined. In 1911 he was transferred to Northampton in the Southern League.

In 1914 he was set to move back to top-class football with Rangers, but war broke out and Tull enlisted. Three years later, as a second lieutenant in Italy, his 'gallantry and coolness' leading his men earned him a mention in despatches.

In March 1918, Tull's regiment was back on the Western Front attempting to hold a huge German offensive. He was shot as he led a counter-attack. His men made repeated but ultimately futile attempts to retrieve his body from no-man's-land. He is commemorated on the Arras Memorial as one of 35,000 soldiers who died nearby and have no known grave.

Tull's commanding officer wrote to his brother to say 'how popular he was throughout the battalion ... The battalion has lost a faithful officer and personally I have lost a friend.'

Prince Alexander Obolensky1916-1940 Leicester and England rugby player and Royal Air Force

One day early in 1940, Vivian Jenkins unexpectedly met Prince Alexander Obolensky in London. The pair had played on opposite sides four years earlier in Cardiff, Jenkins for Wales and the prince on the wing for England. A couple of weeks before that match, Obolensky, who had escaped from Russia with his aristocratic family in 1917, had bagged a brace of tries against New Zealand at Twickenham and become something of a national treasure.

'Obolensky's turn of speed,' wrote one newspaper, 'which, for all a curious manner of turning out the feet, is exceptional and enabled him twice to leave the defence standing. His two tries gave England their lead of six points at half-time and brought him an ovation that surely will live as long in his own memory as it will in the minds of those who did the cheering.' The 13-0 victory was England's fi rst against the All Blacks, all thanks to a Russian prince who, before the match, had been asked by Edward, Prince of Wales, 'By what right do you play for England?'

Now Jenkins was curious to know how Obolensky was getting on in his training as a fighter pilot. The prince said that he was doing all right, though added: ' I still haven't got the hang of landing!'

A few weeks later, Obolensky was practising his landings at RAF Martlesham in Norfolk when he misjudged his approach in a Hawker Hurricane and was killed. In death he was widely mourned, but as much for his joie de vivre as for his rugby. Jenkins said that he trained on 'champagne and a dozen oysters'.

Bernard Gadney, England's captain on the day Obolensky humbled the All Blacks, made an annual pilgrimage to the Russian's grave until his own death in 2000. 'He was a nice young chap,' he recalled. ' It's what's in your heart that counts.'

And one from the other side ...

Bert Trautmann1923- Manchester City goalkeeper and German army

There were 17 minutes left in the 1956 FA Cup final when Manchester City's German goalkeeper Bert Trautmann dived at the feet of Birmingham striker Peter Murphy. A newspaper described how Trautmann 'received sickening blows on the head and neck. He was knocked cold but incredibly he stopped the ball.' He was brought to his senses by smelling salts and, when he rose unsteadily to his feet, a chant went round the Wembley crowd of 'For he's a jolly good fellow'. City won the final 3-1 and Trautmann sat in the dressing room holding his medal, complaining of sore ness. It emerged that he had played on with a broken neck.

He was, a surgeon said, 'the luckiest man alive'. But Trautmann had lived through worse: after enlisting in a German parachute regiment, he fought in the Soviet Union ' for three terrible years ', he recalled. 'We lost a million men simply from the cold. I grew up fast.' Only 90 of his 1,000- strong regiment came back alive. In 1944, by then a sergeant, he fought in France and at Arnhem . In 1945, he was captured by American s. 'I was sure they were going to shoot me,' he said, 'but then, and I'll never know why, they just let me go.' He fell into British hands a few days later. 'Hello Fritz,' they said, 'fancy a cup of tea?'

After three years in a Lancashire POW camp, Trautmann joined St Helens as an amateur in 1948, on the back of his performances in goal for the camp XI. He signed for City a year later, but only after a local rabbi had ended Jewish protests by saying Trautmann was 'a decent fellow, unconnected with any German crimes'.

He made 508 league appearances for City and was Footballer of the Year in 1956. He received an OBE, in 2004, for his work in improving Anglo-German relations through his football trust, the Trautmann Foundation. As for the neck, 60 years on, 'there's still a twinge whenever I look sharp left'.